Milestones:List of IEEE Milestones

Milestones, with their plaque citations, are listed below in chronological order of the achievement. When the dates of the milestone are a range and overlap, our convention is to list them by the start date of the work, e.g. 1961-1972 comes before 1962, which comes before 1962-1965, which comes before 1964, etc.

Prior to 1800

In April 1751 the Royal Society published Benjamin Franklin's book, "Experiments and Observations on Electricity: Made in Philadelphia in America." A collection of letters to London's Peter Collinson, it described Franklin's ideas about the nature of electricity and how electrical devices worked, and new experiments to investigate lightning. This book led to a better understanding of charges, stimulated Franklin's work on lightning rods, and made him an internationally known figure.

Benjamin Franklin, American electrician, printer, and diplomat, spent many years on Craven Street. He lived at No. 7 between 1772 and 1775 and at No. 36 from 1757-1762 and again from 1764-1772. During these years, Franklin popularized the study of electricity, performed experiments, and served as an advisor on lightning conductors.

In 1799, Alessandro Volta developed the first electrical battery. This battery, known as the Voltaic Cell, consisted of two plates of different metals immersed in a chemical solution. Volta's development of the first continuous and reproducible source of electrical current was an important step in the study of electromagnetism and in the development of electrical equipment.

1800-1850

In this building, Shilling`s original electromagnetic telegraph is exhibited. P. L. Shilling, a Russian scientist, successfully transmitted messages over different distances by means of an electric current’s effect on a magnetic needle, using two signs and a telegraph dictionary for transferring letters and digits. Shilling`s demonstrations in St. Petersburg and abroad provided an impetus to scientists in different countries and influenced the invention of more advanced electromagnetic telegraphs.

Reverend Nicholas Callan (1799 - 1864), professor of Natural Philosophy at Saint Patrick's College Maynooth, contributed significantly to the understanding of electrical induction and the development of the induction coil. He did this through a series of experiments that made the inductive transient phenomena visibly clear. The apparatus used in these experiments was replicated in other laboratories.

In this building in January 1838, Samuel F. B. Morse and Alfred Vail first demonstrated publicly crucial elements of their telegraph system, using instruments that Vail had constructed during the previous months. Electrical pulses, transmitted through two miles of wire, caused an electromagnet to ink dots and dashes (grouped to represent letters and words) on a strip of paper. Commercialization began in 1844 when funding became available.

1850-1869

On 28 April 1852 the first municipal electric fire alarm system using call boxes with automatic signaling to indicate the location of a fire was placed into operation in Boston. Invented by William Channing and Moses Farmer, this system was highly successful in reducing property loss and deaths due to fire and was subsequently adopted throughout the United States and in Canada.

Between 1860 and 1871, at his family home Glenlair and at King’s College London, where he was Professor of Natural Philosophy, James Clerk Maxwell conceived and developed his unified theory of electricity, magnetism and light. A cornerstone of classical physics, the Theory of Electromagnetism is summarized in four key equations that now bear his name. Maxwell’s equations today underpin all modern information and communication technologies.

Between July 4 and October 24, 1861, a telegraph line was constructed by the Western Union Company between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, thereby completing the first high-speed communications link between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. This service met the critical demand for fast communications between these two areas. The telegraph line operated until May 1869, when it was replaced by a multi-wire system constructed with the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railway lines.

A permanent electrical communications link between the old world and the new was initiated at this site with the landing of a transatlantic cable on July 27, 1866. This achievement altered for all time personal, commercial, and political relations between peoples on the two sides of the ocean. Five more cables between Heart's Content and Valentia, Ireland were completed between 1866 and 1894. This station continued in operation until 1965. IEEE Canada maintains a web site about this Milestone.

On July 13, 1866 the Great Eastern steamed westward from Valentia, laying telegraph cable behind her. The successful landing at Heart's Content, Newfoundland on July 27 established a permanent electrical communications link that altered for all time personal, commercial and political relations between people across the Atlantic Ocean. Later, additional cables were laid from Valentia and new stations opened at Ballinskelligs (1874) and Waterville (1884), making County Kerry a major focal point for global communications.

County Kerry has dedicated part of their web site to this event. You can find the Milestone under "Heritage".

1870-1889

The first transmission of intelligible speech over electrical wires took place on 10 March 1876. Inventor Alexander Graham Bell called out to his assistant Thomas Watson, "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you." This transmission took place in their attic laboratory located in a building near here at 5 Exeter Place.

Between 1876 and 1882 at Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison developed the world's first industrial research and development laboratory devoted to developing new technology. At this laboratory. Edison and his staff developed the first system of incandescent electric lighting and electric power generation, and invented recorded sound and a commercially successful telephone transmitter.

On 10 August 1876, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated on this site that the human voice could be transmitted electrically over distance. While family members spoke into a transmitter in Brantford, 13 km away, Bell was able to hear them at a receiver located here. This test convinced Bell that his invention could be used for communications between towns and could compete successfully with the telegraph.

Near this site on September 30, 1882, the world's first hydroelectric central station began operation. The station, here reproduced, was known as the Vulcan Street Plant and had a direct current generator capable of lighting 250 sixteen candle power lamps each equivalent to 50 watts. The generator operated at 110 volts and was driven through gears and belts by a water wheel operating under a ten foot fall of water.

The United States Electric Illuminating Company started up South Carolina's first central station for incandescent electric lighting in this building in October 1882. This was just one month after Thomas Edison opened his central station on New York City's Pearl Street. In the following years, the pioneering firm of United States Electric was one of Edison's main competitors.

New York City, NY, U.S.A., Dedicated 10 May 2011 - IEEE New York Section

Thomas Alva Edison established the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, now Consolidated Edison, to commercialize his 1879 incandescent lamp invention. On 4 September 1882, Edison’s direct current (dc) generating station at 257 Pearl Street, began supplying electricity to customers in the First District, a one-quarter square mile (0.65 square km) area. This installation was the forerunner of all central electric generating stations.

As part of the landmark International Electrical Exhibition organized by the Franklin Institute and held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1884, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, a predecessor of IEEE, held its first conference on 7-8 October 1884. This meeting was the first formal technical conference on electrical engineering held in the United States.

On 20 March 1886 William Stanley provided alternating current electrification to offices and stores on Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He thus demonstrated the first practical system for providing electrical illumination using alternating current with transformers to adjust voltage levels of the distribution system.

In this building, Heinrich Hertz first verified Maxwell's equations and prediction of electromagnetic waves in 1886-1888. He observed the reflection, refraction and polarization of the waves and, moreover, the equality of their velocity of propagation with the velocity of light. His 450 MHz transmitter and receiver demonstrated the fundamentals of high-frequency technology.

In November 1886, electric lights illuminated Iolani Palace's grounds for King Kalakaua's 50th birthday celebrations. By March 1887, the Palace had 325 incandescent lights installed within its 104 rooms. The king's action promoted economic development and accelerated implementation of electric lighting of the town of Honolulu on 23 March 1888.

Thomas Alva Edison, a West Orange resident from 1886 until his death in 1931, established his final and most comprehensive laboratory and factory complex about one-half mile (0.8 km) north of here in 1887. Edison's visionary combination in one organization of basic and applied research, development, and manufacturing became the prototype for industrial enterprises worldwide. Work here resulted in more than half of Edison's 1,093 patents.

Edward Weston and the Weston Electrical Instrument Company introduced the first portable and direct-reading current and voltage meters in 1888-1893. Weston's inventions enabling these meters included: the first truly permanent magnets; temperature-insensitive conductors; low-resistance and non-magnetic springs; metal coil frames where induced eddy currents provided pointer damping (1887); the electric shunt (1893) for the measurement of large currents; and multiple current ranges in a single meter.

In February 1888, the electric street railway system designed by Frank Julian Sprague for the Richmond Union Passenger Railway began operating in Richmond, Virginia. Sprague's Richmond system became the lasting prototype for electric street railways because of its large-scale practicality and operating superiority. This system, which combined Sprague's engineering innovations with other proven technical features, helped shape urban growth worldwide.

Boston was the first city to build electric traction for a large-scale rapid transit system. The engineering challenge to design and construct safe, economically viable, and reliable electric power for Boston's rapid transit was met by the West End Street Railway Company, beginning in 1889. The company's pioneering efforts provided an important impetus to the adoption of mass transit systems nationwide.

The first liquid crystal materials were characterized in 1889 by Otto Lehmann in this building. Lehmann recognized the existence of a new state of matter, “flüssige Kristalle” or liquid crystals, which flows like a liquid but has the optical property of double refraction characteristic of crystals. Lehmann’s work on these compounds opened the door to further liquid crystal research and eventually displays and other applications.

1890-1899

In this building, Edouard Branly discovered radioconduction, now called the Branly Effect. On 24 November 1890, he observed that an electromagnetic wave changes the ability of metal filings to conduct electricity. Branly used his discovery to make a very sensitive detector called a coherer, improved versions of which became the first practical wireless signal receivers.

Keage Power Station achieved Japan’s first commercial hydroelectric generation using water intake from the Lake Biwa Canal. Construction of the station began in 1890, and was completed in 1897 with a total capacity of 1,760 kW, pioneering the start-up of power generation. A second canal revitalized the station in 1936 with a capacity of 5,700 kW, contributing to Japan’s technological modernization.

Electricity produced here in the spring of 1891 was transmitted 2.6 miles over rugged and at times inaccessible terrain to provide power for operating the motor-driven mill at the Gold King Mine. This pioneering demonstration of the practical value of transmitting electrical power was a significant precedent in the United States for much larger plants at Niagara Falls (in 1895) and elsewhere. Electricity at Ames was generated at 3000 volts, 133 Hertz, single-phase AC, by a 100-hp Westinghouse alternator.

Built by the Redlands Electric Light and Power Company, the Mill Creek hydroelectric generating plant began operating on 7 September 1893. This powerhouse was foremost in the use of three-phase alternating current power for commercial application and was influential in the widespread adoption of three-phase power throughout the United States.

Yai Dry Battery Limited Partnership Company received a patent for Yai's battery invention in 1893, giving birth to the Japanese dry battery industry, and contributing to its growth. Following this success, GS Yuasa Corporation and Panasonic Corporation pioneered a huge market of both primary and secondary batteries installed in industrial equipment and in home appliances. It advanced Japanese battery industries and consumer electronics.

When the Adams Plant went into operation on August 26, 1895, it represented a key victory for alternating-current systems over direct-current. The clear advantage of high voltage AC for long distance power transmission and the unprecedented size of the plant (it reached its full capacity of ten 5,000-HP generators in May 1900) influenced the future of the electrical industry worldwide.

On 7 May 1895, A. S. Popov demonstrated the possibility of transmitting and receiving short, continuous signals over a distance up to 64 meters by means of electromagnetic waves with the help of a special portable device responding to electrical oscillation which was a significant contribution to the development of wireless communication.

In this garden, after the experiments carried out between 1894 and 1895 in the “Silkworm Room” in the attic of Villa Griffone, Guglielmo Marconi connected a grounded antenna to its transmitter. With this apparatus the young inventor was able to transmit radiotelegraphic signals beyond a physical obstacle, the Celestini hill, at a distance of about two kilometres. The experiment heralded the birth of the era of wireless communication.

On this hill, during the summer of 1895, the radiotelegraphic signals sent by Guglielmo Marconi from the garden of Villa Griffone were received. The reception was communicated to Marconi with a gunshot. This event marked the beginning of the new era of wireless communication

On 27 June 1895, at the nearby Howard Street Tunnel, the B&O demonstrated the first electrified main line railroad, and commercial operation began four days later. The electrification involved designing, engineering, and constructing electric locomotives far more powerful than any then existing and creating innovative electric power generation and distribution facilities. This pioneering achievement became a prototype for later main line railroad electrification.

On 28 August 1895 electricity generated at this location was transmitted to the city of Šibenik, where six power transformers supplied a large number of street lamps. This early system of power generation, transmission and distribution was one of the first complete multiphase alternating current systems in the world and it remained in operation until World War I.

The 1897 430 kW Chivilingo Plant was the first hydroelectric plant in Chile and the second in South America. A 10 km line fed the Lota coal mines and the railway extracting minerals 12 km from shore under the sea. It represented a new key technology and a new source of electrical energy in the region as a tool for economic development. Chivilingo demonstrated the advantages of industrial use of electricity and hastened its widespread adoption in Chile.

At this location in 1897, with local assistance, a researcher carried out some of the first wireless experiments. He transmitted a signal from this 'Shepherdess Stone' over a few meters and later, following six weeks of careful adjustments, over a distance of up to one and a half kilometers.

The Decew Falls Hydro-Electric Development was a pioneering project in the generation and transmission of electrical energy at higher voltages and at greater distances in Canada. On 25 August 1898 this station transmitted power at 22,500 Volts, 66 2/3 Hz, two-phase, a distance of 56 km to Hamilton, Ontario. Using the higher voltage permitted efficient transmission over that distance.

The original Rheinfelden plant was an outstanding achievement in Europe's early large-scale generation of hydroelectric power. It was important for its 17,000 horsepower (12,500 kilowatt) output, for pioneering three-phase alternating current later adopted around the world, and using 50-Hertz frequency which afterwards became standard in most countries. Gradually, Rheinfelden entered into joint operation with other stations, from which the interconnected network of continental Europe evolved.

The first use of wireless telegraphy in the field occurred during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The British Army experimented with Marconi's system and the British Navy successfully used it for communication among naval vessels in Delagoa Bay, prompting further development of Marconi's wireless telegraph system for practical uses.

1900-1919

Electric generating plants, through their high-voltage lines, provided critical power to the isolated mines in this region. Georgetown, completed in 1900, was unusual in employing both steam and water power. Its owner, United Light and Power Company, was a pioneer in using three-phase, 60-Hertz alternating current and in being interconnected with other utilities.

At Signal Hill on December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi and his assistant, George Kemp, confirmed the reception of the first transatlantic radio signals. With a telephone receiver and a wire antenna kept aloft by a kite, they heard Morse code for the letter "S" transmitted from Poldhu, Cornwall. Their experiments showed that radio signals extended far beyond the horizon, giving radio a new global dimension for communication in the twentieth century.

On December 12, 1901, a radio transmission of the Morse code letter 'S' was broadcast from this site, using equipment built by John Ambrose Fleming. At Signal Hill in Newfoundland, Guglielmo Marconi, using a wire antenna kept aloft by a kite, confirmed the reception of these first transatlantic radio signals. These experiments showed that radio signals could propagate far beyond the horizon, giving radio a new global dimension for communications in the twentieth century.

In 1901, the Spanish engineer, Leonardo Torres-Quevedo began the development of a system, which he called Telekine, which was able to do "mechanical movements at a distance." The system was a way of testing dirigible balloons of his own creation without risking human lives. In 1902 and 1903 he requested some patents for the system. With the Telekine, Torres-Quevedo laid down modern wireless remote-control operation principles.

Valdemar Poulsen, a Danish engineer, invented an arc converter as a generator of continuous-wave radio signals in 1902. Beginning in 1904, Poulsen used the arc for experimental radio transmission from Lyngby to various receiving sites in Denmark and Great Britain. Poulsen-arc transmitters were used internationally until they were superseded by vacuum-tube transmitters.

The Vucje hydroelectric plant began operation in 1903. It was the first in southern Serbia and the largest in the broader region. By transmitting alternating electric current of 50 Hz at 7000 volts -- high for the period -- over a distance of 16 km , it helped to transform the regional economy. It remained in continual use for more than a century.

The Alexanderson radio alternator was a high-power, radio-frequency source which provided reliable transoceanic radiotelegraph communication during and after World War I. Ernst F.W. Alexanderson (1878-1975), a General Electric engineer, designed radio alternators with a frequency range to 100 kHz and a power capability from 2 kW to 200 kW. These machines, developed during the period 1904 to 1918, were used in research on high-frequency properties of materials as well as for international communications.

Beginning in the 1880s Professor John Ambrose Fleming of University College London investigated the Edison effect, electrical conduction within a glass bulb from an incandescent filament to a metal plate. In 1904 he constructed such a bulb and used it to rectify high frequency oscillations and thus detect wireless signals. The same year Fleming patented the device, later known as the ‘Fleming valve.'

On 9 June 1906 the Winnipeg Electric Railway Co. transmitted electric power from the Pinawa generating station on the Winnipeg River to the city of Winnipeg at 60,000 volts. It was the first year-round hydroelectric plant in Manitoba and one of the first to be developed in such a cold climate anywhere in the world.

On 24 December 1906, the first radio broadcast for entertainment and music was transmitted from Brant Rock, Massachusetts to the general public. This pioneering broadcast was achieved after years of development work by Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932) who built a complete system of wireless transmission and reception using amplitude modulation (AM) of continuous electromagnetic waves. This technology was a revolutionary departure from transmission of dots and dashes widespread at the time.

Grand Central Terminal, in continuous use since 1913, was the first large-scale railroad electrification project, a development that enabled it to become a major railroad terminal. The design of the Terminal included several notable achievements in the field of electric traction such as innovative designs of electric locomotives, multiple unit (MU) control of electric rolling stock and the pioneering use of underrunning third rail.

This was a pioneering venture in mainline railroad electrification. It established single-phase alternating current as a technical and economical alternative to direct current. This concept exerted considerable influence over subsequent systems both in the United States and abroad. The major components of the system were developed by the engineering staffs of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad and the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

July 17, 1909, the Shoshone Transmission Line began service carrying power, generated by the Shoshone Hydroelectric Generating Station, to Denver. The Line operated at 90 kV, was 153.4 miles long, and crossed the Continental Divide three times reaching an altitude of 13,500 feet. Its design and construction represented an outstanding electrical engineering accomplishment due to its length, the mountainous country over which it was constructed, and the unusually severe weather conditions under which it operated.

In 1909 Nicholas J. Conrad and Edmund O. Schweitzer developed an extremely reliable high voltage power fuse which used an arc-extinguishing liquid to assure proper interruption of short circuits. These fuses, later manufactured at this location, played a major role in the adoption of outdoor distribution substations, and the technology remains a central component of electrical transmission and distribution systems today.

The Panama Canal project included one of the largest and most important electrical installations in the world early in the 20th century. The use of 1022 electric motors with an installed capacity of 28,290 horsepower largely replaced the steam and water powered equipment then in common use. Reliability and safety were also engineered into the innovative electrical control system, enabling remote lock operation from a central location.

1920-1929

Westinghouse Radio Station KDKA was a world pioneer of commercial radio broadcasting. Transmitting with a power of 100 watts on a wavelength of 360 meters, KDKA began scheduled programming with the Harding-Cox Presidential election returns on November 2, 1920. A shed, housing studio and transmitter, was atop the K Building of the Westinghouse East Pittsburgh works. Conceived by C.P. Davis, broadcasting as a public service evolved from Frank Conrad's weekly experimental broadcasts over his amateur radio station 8XK, attracting many regular listeners who had wireless receiving sets.

In early 1920, in this building, technicians of the Königs Wusterhausen radio station together with employees from the Telegraphentechnisches Reichsamt, began experiments broadcasting voice and music using an arc transmitter. By late 1920, tests had become successful enough to transmit an instrumental concert on 22 December -- the so-called Christmas concert. This transmission is regarded as the birth of statutorily regulated broadcasting in Germany.

In these laboratories, beginning in 1924, Professor Hidetsugu Yagi and his assistant, Shintaro Uda, designed and constructed a sensitive and highly-directional antenna using closely-coupled parasitic elements. The antenna, which is effective in the higher-frequency ranges, has been important for radar, television, and amateur radio.

Professor Kenjiro Takayanagi started his research program in television at Hamamatsu Technical College (now Shizuoka University) in 1924. He transmitted an image of the Japanese character イ(i) on a cathode-ray tube on 25 December 1926 and broadcast video over an electronic television system in 1935. His work, patents, articles, and teaching helped lay the foundation for the rise of Japanese television and related industries to global leadership.

Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi developed the quantum statistics that would be named after him while teaching at the School of Engineering of the University of Florence. The Fermi-Dirac statistics were a fundamental contribution to semiconductor physics and to the development of electronics.

Members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain witnessed the world's first public demonstration of live television on 26 January 1926 in this building at 22 Frith Street, London. Inventor and entrepreneur John Logie Baird used the first floor as a workshop during 1924-1926, for various experimental activities, including the development of his television system. The BBC adopted Baird’s system for its first television broadcast service in 1930.

At this site on April 7, 1928 the Detroit Police Department commenced regular one-way radio communication with its patrol cars. Developed by personnel of the department's radio bureau, the system was the product of seven years of experimentation under the direction of police commissioner, William P. Rutledge. Their work proved the practicality of land-mobile radio for police work and led to its adoption throughout the country.

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Nobel-laureate (Physics-1930), assisted by K S Krishnan at IACS, Calcutta, India, discovered on 28 February 1928, that when a beam of coloured light entered a liquid, a fraction of the light scattered was of a different colour, dependent on material property. This radiation effect of molecular scattering of light bears his name as ‘Raman Effect’, from which many applications in photonic communications and spectroscopy evolved.

The Shannon Scheme was officially opened at Parteen Weir on 22 July 1929. One of the largest engineering projects of its day, it was successfully executed by Siemens to harness the Shannon River. It subsequently served as a model for large-scale electrification projects worldwide. Operated by the Electricity Board of Ireland, it had an immediate impact on the social, economic and industrial development of Ireland and continues to supply significant power beyond the end of the 20th century.

New York, New York, U.S.A., Dedicated 25 September 2008 - IEEE New York Section

The Direct Current (dc) generating plant installed at the New Yorker Hotel in 1929, capable of supplying electric power sufficient for a city of 35,000 people, was the largest private generating plant in the U.S.A. Steam engines drove electric generators, with exhaust steam used for heating and other facilities. The installation used more than two hundred dc motors, and was controlled from a seven-foot (two-meter) high, sixty-foot (eighteen-meter) long switchboard.

In April 1929, the Yosami Station established the first wireless communications between Japan and Europe with a long wave operating at 17.442 kHz. An inductor-type high-frequency alternator provided output power at 500 kW. The antenna system used eight towers, each 250m high. The facilities were used for communicating with submarines by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1941 to 1945 and by the United States Navy from 1950 to 1993.

On 24 September 1929, the first blind takeoff, flight and landing occurred at Mitchel Field, Garden City, NY in a Consolidated NY-2 biplane piloted by Lt. James Doolittle. Equipped with specially designed radio and aeronautical instrumentation, it represented the cooperative efforts of many organizations, mainly the Guggenheim Fund’s Full Flight Laboratory, U.S. Army Air Corps, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Sperry Gyroscope Company, Kollsman Instrument Company and Radio Frequency Laboratories.

1930-1939

In 1930, at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Drs. Yogoro Kato and Takeshi Takei invented ferrite, a magnetic ceramic compound containing oxides of iron and of other metals with properties useful in electronics. TDK Corporation began mass production of ferrite cores in 1937 for use in radio equipment. The electric and electronics industries use ferrites in numerous applications today.

Alan Dower Blumlein filed a patent for a two-channel audio system called “stereo” on 14 December 1931. It included a "shuffling" circuit to preserve directional sound, an orthogonal “Blumlein Pair” of velocity microphones, the recording of two orthogonal channels in a single groove, stereo disc-cutting head, and hybrid transformer to mix directional signals. Blumlein brought his equipment to Abbey Road Studios in 1934 and recorded the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Polish Cipher Bureau mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski broke the German Enigma cipher machine codes. Working with engineers from the AVA Radio Manufacturing Company, they built the ‘bomba’ – the first cryptanalytic machine to break Enigma codes. Their work was a foundation of British code breaking efforts which, with later American assistance, helped end World War II.

In 1933, the police department in Bayonne, New Jersey initiated regular two-way communications with its patrol cars, a major advance over previous one-way systems. The very high frequency system developed by radio engineer Frank A. Gunther and station operator Vincent J. Doyle placed transmitters in patrol cars to enable patrolmen to communicate with headquarters and other cars instead of just receiving calls. Two-way police radio became standard throughout the country following the success of the Bayonne system.

In April 1933, Issac Koga of the Tokyo Institute of Technology reported cutting angles that produced quartz crystal plates having a zero temperature coefficient of frequency. These angles, 54⁰ 45’ and 137⁰ 59’, he named the R1 and R2 cuts. Temperature-insensitive quartz crystal was used at first for radio transmitters and later for clocks, and has proven indispensable to all radio communication systems and much of information electronics.

Beginning 3 February 1934, Vice Admiral Richard E. Byrd's Antarctic Expedition transmitted news releases to New York via short-wave radio voice equipment. From New York, the US nationwide CBS network broadcast the news releases to the public. Previous expeditions had been limited to dot-dash telegraphy, but innovative equipment from the newly formed Collins Radio Company made this long-range voice transmission feasible.

The five million volt van de Graaff generator represents the first large-scale program in nuclear physics established in industry. Constructed by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1937, it made possible precise measurements of nuclear reactions and provided valuable research experience for the company's pioneering work in nuclear power.

The 1938 Zenit radar test at the Laboratory of Electromagnetic Oscillations of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology was a major advance in the development of radar. Designed by Abram Slutskin, Alexander Usikov, and Semion Braude, microwave scientists and magnetron pioneers, Zenit established the practicality of combining the pulsed method and a shorter wave band for determining precisely all three coordinates of airborne targets.

John Vincent Atanasoff conceived basic design principles for the first electronic-digital computer in the winter of 1937 and, assisted by his graduate student, Clifford E. Berry, constructed a prototype here in October 1939. It used binary numbers, direct logic for calculation, and a regenerative memory. It embodied concepts that would be central to the future development of computers.

On this site during the 1939-45 World War, 12,000 men and women broke the German Lorenz and Enigma ciphers, as well as Japanese and Italian codes and ciphers. They used innovative mathematical analysis and were assisted by two computing machines developed here by teams led by Alan Turing: the electro-mechanical Bombe developed with Gordon Welchman, and the electronic Colossus designed by Tommy Flowers. These achievements greatly shortened the war, thereby saving countless lives.

In 1939, Shure Incorporated introduced the Unidyne microphone. Using the Uniphase acoustical system, the patented Unidyne was the first microphone to provide directional characteristics using a single dynamic element. This breakthrough offered lower cost, greater reliability and improved performance for communication and public address systems. Shure Unidyne microphones are still manufactured and used worldwide in numerous audio applications.

The mathematical principles of Information Theory, laid down by Claude Elwood Shannon over the period 1939-1967, set in motion a revolution in communication system engineering. They quantified the concept of information, established fundamental limits in the representation and reliable transmission of information, and revealed the architecture of systems for approaching them. Today, Information Theory continues to provide the foundation for advances in information collection, storage, distribution, and processing.

1940-1949

A major advance in police radio occurred in 1940 when the Connecticut state police began operating a two-way, frequency modulated (FM) system in Hartford. The statewide system developed by Daniel E. Noble of the University of Connecticut and engineers at the Fred M. Link Company greatly reduced static, the main problem of the amplitude modulated (AM) system. FM mobile radio became standard throughout the country following the success of the Connecticut system.

The MIT Radiation Laboratory, operated on this site between 1940 and 1945, advanced the allied war effort by making fundamental contributions to the design and deployment of microwave radar systems. Used on land, sea, and in the air, in many adaptations, radar was a decisive factor in the outcome of the conflict. The laboratory's 3900 employees made lasting contributions to microwave theory and technology, operational radar, systems engineering, long-range navigation, and control equipment.

The rapid development of Loran -- long range navigation -- under wartime conditions at MIT’s Radiation Lab was not only a significant engineering feat but also transformed navigation, providing the world’s first near-real-time positioning information. Beginning in June 1942, the United States Coast Guard helped develop, install and operate Loran until 2010.

On December 7, 1941, an SCR-270b radar located at this site tracked incoming Japanese aircraft for over 30 minutes until they were obscured by the island ground clutter. This was the first wartime use of radar by the United States military, and led to its successful application throughout the theater.

In 1942, the United States Navy joined with the National Cash Register Company to design and manufacture a series of code-breaking machines. This project was located at the U.S. Naval Computing Machine Laboratory in Building 26, near this site. The machines built here, including the American "Bombes", incorporated advanced electronics and significantly influenced the course of World War II.

The Whirlwind computer was developed at 211 Massachusetts Avenue by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was the first real-time high-speed digital computer using random-access magnetic-core memory. Whirlwind featured outputs displayed on a CRT, and a light pen to write data on the screen. Whirlwindʼs success led to the United States Air Forceʼs Semi Automatic Ground Environment - SAGE - system and to many business computers and minicomputers.

In 1945, Marcellus Merrill first implemented an electronic dynamic wheel-balancing system. Previously, all mechanical methods were static in nature and required removing the wheels from the vehicle. Merrill's innovative balancing system came to be widely used internationally. Elements of the dynamic balancing systems are still used today, primarily for industrial and automotive production applications.

In December, 1945, much-needed hydroelectric power began flowing from here to other parts of Uruguay. World War II had interrupted the work begun by a German consortium, but Uruguayan engineers reformulated and completed the project using United States-supplied equipment. The large artificial lake spurred further Rio Negro electrification; availability of abundant, clean hydroelectricity was a turning point in Uruguay's development, quality of life, and engineering profession.

A major advance in the history of computing occurred at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 when engineers put the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) into operation. Designed and constructed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering under a U. S. Army contract during World War II, the ENIAC established the practicality of large scale, electronic digital computers and strongly influenced the development of the modern, stored-program, general-purpose computer.

On this site between 1946 and 1950 the research staff of RCA Laboratories invented the world's first electronic, monochrome-compatible, color television system. They worked with other engineers in the industry for three years to develop a national analog standard based on this system, which lasted until the transition to digital broadcasting.

At this site, in Building 1, Room 1E455, from 17 November to 23 December 1947, Walter H. Brattain and John A. Bardeen -- under the direction of William B. Shockley -- discovered the transistor effect, and developed and demonstrated a point-contact germanium transistor. This led directly to developments in solid-state devices that revolutionized the electronics industry and changed the way people around the world lived, learned, worked, and played.

In 1947 Dennis Gabor conceived the idea of wavefront reconstruction for improving the performance of the electron microscope. This became the basis for the invention of optical holography for three-dimensional imaging but implementation required coherent light sources and had to await the emergence of the laser some years later. Gabor was awarded the Nobel Prize for his invention in 1971.

In an attempt to automate the reading of product information in a local grocery store, Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland at the Drexel Institute of Technology developed a solution that became the ubiquitous Barcode Identification System. Patented in 1952, the Barcode has become a key technology for product identification and inventory control in industry and daily life.

In 1948, Prof. Yasuto Mushiake of Tohoku University discovered that antennas with self-complementary geometries are frequency independent, presenting a constant impedance, and often a constant radiation pattern over very wide frequency ranges. This principle is the basis for many very-wide-bandwidth antenna designs, with applications that include television reception, wireless broadband, radio astronomy, and cellular telephony.

The first atomic clock, developed near this site by Harold Lyons at the National Bureau of Standards, revolutionized timekeeping by using transitions of the ammonia molecule as its source of frequency. Far more accurate than previous clocks, atomic clocks quickly replaced the Earth’s rotational rate as the reference for world time. Atomic clock accuracy made possible many new technologies, including the Global Positioning System (GPS).

1950-1959

The demonstrated success in space flight is the result of electronic technology developed at Cape Canaveral, the J. F. Kennedy Space Center, and other sites, and applied here. A wide variety of advances in radar tracking, data telemetry, instrumentation, space-to-ground communications, on-board guidance, and real-time computation were employed to support the U.S. space program. These and other electronic developments provided infrastructure necessary for the successful landing of men on the moon in July 1969 and their safe return to earth.

In 1950, in Room 64 of the Bantling Institute of the University of Toronto, Drs. Wilfred Bigelow and John Callaghan successfully paced the heart of a dog using an external electronic pacemaker-defibrillator having implanted electrodes. The device was developed by Dr. John Hopps at the National Research Council of Canada. This pioneering work led to the use of cardiac pacemakers in humans and helped establish the importance of electronic devices in medicine.

The commercial manufacture of transistors began here in October 1951. Smaller, more efficient, and more reliable than the vacuum tubes they replaced, transistors revolutionized the electronics industry.

At this facility on 20 December 1951 electricity was first generated from the heat produced by a sustained nuclear reaction providing steam to a turbine generator. This event inaugurated the nuclear power industry in the United States. On 4 June 1953 EBR-I provided the first proof of "breeding“ capability, producing one atom of nuclear fuel for each atom burned, and later produced electricity using a plutonium core reactor.

In 1951 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology undertook the development of an air defense system for the United States. The centerpiece of this defense system was a large digital computer originally developed at MIT. The MIT Lincoln Laboratory was formed to carry out the initial development of this system and the first of some 23 SAGE control centers was completed in 1958. SAGE was the forerunner of today’s digital computer networks.

On 16 December 1953, the first television broadcast in Western Canada was transmitted from this site by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's CBUT Channel 2. The engineering experience gained here was instrumental in the subsequent establishment of the more than one thousand public and private television broadcasting sites that serve Western Canada today.

The Gotland HVDC Link was the world’s first commercial HVDC transmission link using the first submarine HVDC cable. It connected the Island of Gotland to mainland Sweden. The 96 km-long cable used mass-impregnated technology. The Swedish manufacturer ASEA produced the link for Vattenfall, the state-owned utility. The project used mercury-arc valves for the 20 MW/100 kV HVDC converters, developed by an ASEA-Vattenfall team led by Dr. Uno Lamm.

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, built the Weizmann Automatic Computer (WEIZAC) during 1954-1955 with the scientific vision of Chaim Pekeris and the engineering leadership of Gerald Estrin. The WEIZAC was based on drawings from the IAS computer at Princeton University and built with much ingenuity. The machine was the first digital electronic computer constructed in the Middle East and it became an indispensable scientific computing resource for many scientists and engineers worldwide.

Developed by IBM in San Jose, California at 99 Notre Dame Street from 1952 until 1956, the Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC) was the first computer system conceived around a radically new magnetic disk storage device. The extremely large capacity, rapid access, and low cost of magnetic disk storage revolutionized computer architecture, performance, and applications.

Global telephone communications using submarine cables began on 25 September 1956, when the first transatlantic undersea telephone system, TAT-1, went into service. This site is the eastern terminal of the transatlantic cable that stretched west to Clarenville, Newfoundland. TAT-1 was a great technological achievement providing unparalleled reliability with fragile components in hostile environments. It was made possible through the efforts of engineers at AT&T Bell Laboratories and British Post Office. The system operated until 1978.

Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., completed the innovative Kurobe River No. 4 Hydropower Plant, including the subterranean power station and Kurobe Dam, in 1963. The 275kV long-distance transmission system delivered the generated electric power to the Kansai region and solved serious power shortages, contributing to industrial development and enhancing living standards for the population.

In 1956, Ampex Corporation of Redwood City, California, introduced the first practical videotape recorder for television stations and networks to produce and time-shift broadcasts, replacing impractical "kinescope" movie film previously used to record TV. The Emmy-award-winning Ampex "VTR" analog-video standard ruled broadcasting and video production worldwide for twenty years.

At this location, 391 San Antonio Road, the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory manufactured the first silicon devices in what became known as Silicon Valley. Some of the talented scientists and engineers initially employed there left to found their own companies, leading to the birth of the silicon electronics industry in the region. Hundreds of firms in electronics and computing can trace their origins back to Shockley Semiconductor.

During the winter of 1957-58, Earl E. Bakken developed the first wearable transistorized pacemaker, the request of heart surgeon, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei. As earlier pacemakers were AC-powered, this battery-powered device liberated patients from their power-cord tethers. The wearable pacemaker was a significant step in the evolution to fully-implantable units.

On 12 September 1958, Jack S. Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit to managers at Texas Instruments. This was the first time electronic components were integrated onto a single substrate. This seminal device consisted of a phase shift oscillator circuit on a tiny bar of germanium measuring 7/16” by 1/16” (11.1 mm by 1.6 mm). Today, integrated circuits are the fundamental building blocks of virtually all electronic equipment.

This is the original location of the electric-power interconnection of three countries: Switzerland, Germany and France. The Union for Production and Transmission of Electricity (now UCTE) was formed to manage this interconnection. This installation pioneered international connections, and technical and political cooperation for European integration. UCTE coordinated one of the largest synchronously connected power networks serving almost all of continental Europe.

The 1959 invention of the Planar Process by Jean A. Hoerni and the Integrated Circuit (IC) based on planar technology by Robert N. Noyce catapulted the semiconductor industry into the silicon IC era. This pair of pioneering inventions led to the present IC industry, which today supplies a wide and growing variety of advanced semiconductor products used throughout the world.

Sharp Corporation pioneered the development and commercialization of photovoltaic (PV) cells for applications ranging from satellites to lighthouses to residential uses. From the beginning of research into monocrystal PV-cells in 1959, to the mass production of amorphous PV-cells in 1983, this work contributed greatly toward the industrialization of photovoltaic technologies and toward the mitigation of global warming.

TIROS 1 - TELEVISION INFRA-RED OBSERVATION SATELLITE, 1960 On 1 April 1960, the National Aeronautical and Space Administration launched TIROS I, the world's first meteorological satellite, to capture and transmit video images of the Earth's weather patterns. RCA staff at Defense Electronics Products, the David Sarnoff Research Center, and Astro-Electronics Division designed and constructed the satellite and ground station systems. TIROS I pioneered meteorological and environmental satellite television for an expanding array of purposes.

On this site in May 1960 Theodore Maiman built and operated the first laser. A number of teams around the world were trying to construct this theoretically anticipated device from different materials. Maiman’s was based on a ruby rod optically pumped by a flash lamp. The laser was a transformative technology in the 20th century and continues to enjoy wide application in many fields of human endeavor.

In 1961, Elias Snitzer and colleagues constructed and operated the world's first optical fiber laser in the former American Optical complex at 14 Mechanic Street. Three years later this team demonstrated the first optical fiber amplifier. Fiber lasers that can cut and weld steel have since become powerful industrial tools and fiber amplifiers routinely boost signals in the global optical fiber network allowing messages to cross oceans and continents without interruption.

Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard created the Simula programming languages in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computer Center. They introduced a new way of modeling and simulating complex tasks. Object-oriented programming is now dominant in systems development. It is an integral part of computer science curricula, as are languages built on object-oriented programming concepts, such as Smalltalk, C++, Java, and Python.

The Stanford two-mile accelerator, the longest in the world, accelerates electrons to the very high energy needed in the study of subatomic particles and forces. Experiments performed here have shown that the proton, one of the building blocks of the atom, is in turn composed of smaller particles now called quarks. Other research here has uncovered new families of particles and demonstrated subtle effects of the weak nuclear force. This research requires the utmost precision in the large and unique electromechanical devices and systems that accelerate, define, deliver and store the beams of particles, and in the detectors that analyze the results of the particle interactions.

Driven by the need to understand the characteristics of radio communication in Canada's North, Canadian researchers focused on the exploration of the earth's upper atmosphere, the ionosphere. Canada's satellite program commenced with the launch of Alouette-I on September 29, 1962. Alouette-II followed in 1965, ISIS-I in 1969, ISIS-II in 1971. The Alouette/ISIS tracking antenna serves as a reminder of Canada's contribution to this international effort in space science. IEEE Canada maintains a web site on this Milestone.

On 11 July 1962 this site transmitted the first transatlantic TV signal to a twin station in Pleumeur-Bodou, France via the TELSTAR satellite. The success of TELSTAR and the earth stations, the first built for active satellite communications, illustrated the potential of a future world-wide satellite system to provide communications between continents.

On 11 July 1962 this site transmitted the first live television signal across the Atlantic from Europe to the USA, via TELSTAR. This Satellite Earth Station was designed and built by the British Post Office Engineering Department. Known as 'Arthur' (of "Knights of the Round Table" fame), its open-dish design became a model for satellite television earth stations throughout the world.

On 11 July 1962 this site received the first transatlantic transmission of a TV signal from a twin station in Andover, Maine, USA via the TELSTAR satellite. The success of TELSTAR and the earth stations, the first built for active satellite communications, illustrated the potential of a future world-wide satellite system to provide communications between continents.

A key milestone in development of the quartz electronic wristwatch in Switzerland was the creation in 1962 of the Centre Electronique Horloger of Neuchâtel. The Centre produced the first prototypes incorporating dedicated integrated circuits that set new timekeeping performance records at the International Chronometric Competition held at this observatory in 1967. Since then quartz watches, with hundreds of millions of units produced, became an extremely successful electronic system.

Col. John Glenn piloted the Mercury Friendship 7 spacecraft in the first United States human orbital flight on 20 February 1962. Electrical and electronic systems invented by McDonnell engineers, including IRE members, made his and future spaceflights possible. Among the key contributions were navigation and control instruments, autopilot, rate stabilization and control, and fly-by-wire (FBW) systems.

The Grumman Lunar Module was the first vehicle to land man on an extraterrestrial body, the Moon. Because it was designed to fly solely in space, its design, construction and testing continuously pushed the technology envelope for lightweight metals and unique electrical and electronic systems resulting in one of the most important and successful engineering achievements of mankind.

The Apollo Guidance Computer provided spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control during all of NASA’s Apollo Moon missions. It was developed under the leadership of Dr. Charles Stark Draper at the MIT Instrumentation Lab - now Draper Laboratory. This pioneering digital flight computer was the first real-time embedded computing system to collect data automatically and provide mission-critical calculations for the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module.

The Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest radiotelescope, was dedicated in 1963. Its design and implementation led to advances in the electrical engineering areas of antenna design, signal processing, and electronic instrumentation, and in the mechanical engineering areas of antenna suspension and drive systems. The drive system positions all active parts of the antenna with millimeter precision, regardless of temperature changes, enabling the telescope to maintain an accurate focus. Its subsequent operation led to advances in the scientific fields of radioastronomy, planetary studies, and space and atmospheric sciences.

The Taum Sauk Plant, when it came on-line in 1963, was the largest pure pumped-storage electric power plant in North America. Other pioneering features for this pumped-storage plant were its high capacity turbine-generators and its ability to be operated remotely, 90 miles away, from St. Louis, Missouri.

First Transpacific Reception of a Television (TV) Signal via Satellite, 1963 On 23 November 1963, this site received the first transpacific transmission of a TV Signal from Mojave earth station in California, U.S.A., via the Relay 1 communications satellite. The Ibaraki earth station used a 20m Cassegrain antenna, the first use of this type of antenna for commercial telecommunications. This event demonstrated the capability and impact of satellite communications and helped open a new era of intercontinental live TV programming relayed via Satellite.

ASCII, a character-encoding scheme originally based on the Latin alphabet, became the most common character encoding on the World Wide Web through 2007. ASCII is the basis of most modern character-encoding schemes. The American Standards Association X3.2 subcommittee published the first edition of the ASCII standard in 1963. Its first widespread commercial implementation was in the American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) Teletypewriter eXchange network and Teletype Model 33 teleprinters.

Completed in 1964 as the highest weather radar in the world in the pre-satellite era, the Mount Fuji Radar System almost immediately warned of a major storm over 800 km away. In addition to advancing the technology of weather radar, it pioneered aspects of remote-control and low-maintenance of complex electronic systems. The radar was planned by the Japan Meteorological Agency and constructed by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.

Tokaido Shinkansen (Bullet Train) was designed with the world's most advanced electrical and mechanical train technologies to operate at speeds up to 210 km/hr, a world record when it began service in 1964. It has carried over 100 million passengers per year for many years with an excellent safety record.

A Sharp Corporation project team designed and produced several families of electronic calculators on the basis of all-transistor (1964), bipolar and MOS integrated circuit (1967), MOS Large Scale Integration (1969) and CMOS-LSI/Liquid Crystal Display (1973). The integration of CMOS-LSI and LCD devices onto a single glass substrate yielded battery-powered calculators. These achievements made possible the widespread personal use of hand-held calculators

NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) developed high-definition television (HDTV), a high-resolution and wide-screen television system designed to convey a strong sense of reality to viewers. Research began in 1964, ranging from psychophysical experiments to system development. In 1989, the world's first HDTV broadcast via satellite opened a new era in broadcasting. Since 1989, HDTV has spread throughout the world.

Hydro-Quebec's 735,000 volt electric power transmission system was the first in the world to be designed, built and operated at an alternating-current voltage above 700 kV. This development extended the limits of long-distance transmission of electrical energy. On 29 November 1965 the first 735 kV line was inaugurated. Power was transmitted from the Manicouagan-Outardes hydro-electric generating complex to Montreal, a distance of 600 km.

Pioneering ticket examining machines, designed to speed commuter railroad use substantially, were first installed in 1965, based on work by a joint research team of Osaka University and Kintetsu Corporation. Following this work, an improved version -- based on joint work by Omron, Kintetsu, and Hankyu corporations using punched cards and magnetic cards -- was first deployed in 1967 and at nineteen stations in 1971.

Luigi Dadda published the first description of the optimized scheme, subsequently called a Dadda Tree, for a digital circuit to compute the multiplication of unsigned fixed-point numbers in binary arithmetic. This circuit allowed the arithmetic units of microprocessor-based computers to execute complex arithmetic operations with a performance/cost ratio unequaled at that time. His research and teaching pioneered computer engineering in Italy.

Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Fairchild and Intel, began his work in silicon microelectronics at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1956. His 1965 prediction at Fairchild Semiconductor, subsequently known as "Moore’s Law,” that the number of components on an integrated circuit will increase exponentially with time while cost per function decreases, guided the industry's contributions to advances in electronics and computing for more than fifty years.

The "Brown Box" console, developed at Sanders Associates - later BAE Systems - between 1966 and 1968, was the first interactive video game system to use an ordinary home television set. This groundbreaking device and the production-engineered version Magnavox Odyssey game system (1972) spawned the commercialization of interactive console video games, which became a multi-billion dollar industry.

On the morning of 17 April 1967, radio astronomers used this radiotelescope at DRAO and a second one at the Algonquin Radio Observatory located 3074 km away to make the first successful radio astronomical observations using Very Long Baseline Interferometry. Today, VLBI networks span the globe, extend into space and continue to make significant contributions to both radio astronomy and geodesy.

At CERN laboratories the invention of multiple-wire proportional chambers and drift chambers revolutionized the domain of electronic particle detectors, leading to new research on the constitution of matter. The development of unique electrical and electronic devices made possible the major high-energy physics experiments which have been recognized worldwide.

Between 1964 and 1968, at the RCA David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, New Jersey, a team of engineers and scientists led by George H. Heilmeier with Louis A. Zanoni and Lucian A. Barton, devised a method for electronic control of light reflected from liquid crystals and demonstrated the first liquid crystal display. Their work launched a global industry that now produces millions of LCDs annually for watches, calculators, flat-panel displays in televisions, computers and instruments.

Commonly termed the "Mother of All Demos," Douglas Engelbart and his team demonstrated their oNLine System (NLS) at Brooks Hall in San Francisco on 9 December 1968. Connected via microwave link to the host computer and other remote users at SRI in Menlo Park, the demonstration showcased many fundamental technologies that would become ubiquitous, including collaborative online editing, hypertext, video conferencing, word processing, spell checking, revision control, and the mouse.

After ten years of research and development at Suwa Seikosha, a manufacturing company of Seiko Group, a team of engineers headed by Tsuneya Nakamura produced the first quartz wristwatch to be sold to the public. The Seiko Quartz-Astron 35SQ was introduced in Tokyo on December 25, 1969. Crucial elements included a quartz crystal oscillator, a hybrid integrated circuit, and a miniature stepping motor to turn the hands. It was accurate to within five seconds per month.

At 10:30 p.m., 29 October 1969, the first ARPANET message was sent from this UCLA site to the Stanford Research Institute. Based on packet switching and dynamic resource allocation, the sharing of information digitally from this first node of ARPANET launched the Internet revolution.

SRI was one of the first two nodes, with the University of California at Los Angeles, on the ARPANET, the first digital global network based on packet switching and demand access. The first documented ARPANET connection was from UCLA to SRI on 29 October 1969 at 10:30 p.m. The ARPANET’s technology and deployment laid the foundation for the development of the Internet.

At Great Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), by 1975 James Ellis had proved that a symmetric secret-key system is unnecessary and Clifford Cocks with Malcolm Williamson showed how such 'public-key cryptography' could be achieved. Until then it was believed that secure communication was impossible without exchange of a secret key, with key distribution a major impediment. With these discoveries the essential principles were known but were kept secret until 1997.

1970-1979

In 1970, Corning scientists Dr. Robert Maurer, Dr. Peter Schultz, and Dr. Donald Keck developed a highly pure optical glass that effectively transmitted light signals over long distances. This astounding medium, which is thinner than a human hair, revolutionized global communications. By 2011, the world depended upon the continuous transmission of voice, data, and video along more than 1.6 billion kilometers of optical fiber installed around the globe.

At this site, between 1971 and 1978, the first Japanese-language word processor was developed. Researchers headed by Ken-ichi Mori created a wholly new concept of Japanese word processing. Their first practical system, JW-10, was publicly unveiled on 3 October 1978. The JW-10, and improved versions, played a major role in advancing the Information Age in Japan, and provided the basis for Japanese-language word-processing software in personal computers.

SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) was created at UC Berkeley as a class project in 1969-1970. It evolved to become the worldwide standard integrated circuit simulator. SPICE has been used to train many students in the intricacies of circuit simulation. SPICE and its descendents have become essential tools employed by virtually all integrated circuit designers.

On 17 June 1972, the Nelson River High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission system began delivery of electric power. It used the highest operating voltage to deliver the largest amount of power from a remote site to a city. The bipolar scheme gave superior line reliability and the innovative use of the controls added significantly to the overall system capabilities. Finally, the scheme used the largest mercury arc valves ever developed for such an application.

The HP-35 was the first handheld calculator to perform transcendental functions (such as trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions). Most contemporary calculators could only perform the four basic operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The HP-35 and subsequent models have replaced the slide rule, used by generations of engineers and scientists. The HP-35 performed all the functions of the slide rule to ten-digit precision over a full two-hundred-decade range.

Operating since 1972, Eel River, New Brunswick is home to the world's first commercial solid state High Voltage Direct Current converter station. This 320 MW interconnection facility, built by Canadian General Electric and NB Power, incorporates high current silicon solid state thyristors to convert alternating current from Hydro Quebec to direct current and back to alternating, allowing asynchronous, stable power transfers to serve NB Power's customers.

Hitachi developed practical field emission electron source technology in collaboration with Albert Crewe of the University of Chicago, and commercialized the world’s first field emission scanning electron microscope in 1972. This technology enabled stable and reliable ultrahigh resolution imaging with easy operation. Field emission electron microscopes have made invaluable contributions to the progress of science, technology and industry in physics, biology, materials, and semiconductor devices.

The first large-scale use of superconducting magnets enabled the construction of the Tevatron. By 1985, the Tevatron achieved energy above 1 Tera electron-volt (TeV) in proton-antiproton collisions, making it the most powerful particle collider in the world until 2009. The Tevatron construction established the superconducting wire manufacturing infrastructure that made applications such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) viable.

Researchers at Stony Brook University produced the first two-dimensional image using nuclear magnetic resonance in 1973.The proton distribution of the object, a test tube of water, was distinctly encoded using magnetic field gradients. This achievement was a major advance for MRI and paved the way for its worldwide usage as a noninvasive method to examine body tissue for disease detection.

At 3:30 pm on 15 December 1974, the first 500 MeV proton beam was extracted from the TRIUMF cyclotron. Since then, TRIUMF has used proton beams from its cyclotron (and secondary beams of pions, muons, neutrons and radioactive ions produced in its experimental halls) to conduct pioneering studies that have advanced nuclear physics, particle physics, molecular and materials science, and nuclear medicine.

In August 1974, the first real-time speech communication over a packet-switched network was demonstrated via ARPANET between MIT Lincoln Laboratory and USC Information Sciences Institute. By 1982, these technologies enabled Internet packet speech and conferencing linking terrestrial, packet radio, and satellite networks. This work in real-time network protocols and speech coding laid the foundation for voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) communications and related applications including Internet videoconferencing.

Dr. Gary A. Kildall demonstrated the first working prototype of CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) in Pacific Grove in 1974. Together with his invention of the BIOS (Basic Input Output System), Kildall’s operating system allowed a microprocessor-based computer to communicate with a disk drive storage unit and provided an important foundation for the personal computer revolution.

Line Spectrum Pair, invented at NTT in 1975, is an important technology for speech synthesis and coding. A speech synthesizer chip was designed based on Line Spectrum Pair in 1980. In the 1990s, this technology was adopted in almost all international speech coding standards as an essential component and has contributed to the enhancement of digital speech communication over mobile channels and the Internet worldwide.

Gapless Metal Oxide Surge Arrester (MOSA) for electric power systems,1975 Meidensha Corporation developed MOSA and its mass production system by innovating on Panasonic Corporation’s ZnO varistor basic patent. MOSA dramatically raised performance levels against multiple lightning strikes and contamination and led to the UHV protective device development. This technology contributed to improving the safety and reliability of electric power systems and to establishing the international standards.

At the Yokohama Plant of Victor Company of Japan, Limited, a team of engineers headed by Shizuo Takano and Yuma Shiraishi developed VHS (Video Home System) format. They looked ahead to the need for home video tape recorders and embodied their idea in unique inventions. The first model JVC HR-3300 was announced on 9 September 1976. Their basic design with subsequent improvement gained wide customer acceptance. VHS became the world standard for home video tape recorders.

From 1976-1978, at Hughes Microelectronics in Newport Beach, California, the practicality, reliability, manufacturability and endurance of the Floating Gate EEPROM -- an electrically erasable device using a thin gate oxide and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling for writing and erasing -- was proven. As a significant foundation of data storage in flash memory, this fostered new classes of portable computing and communication devices which allow ubiquitous personal access to data.

The data compression algorithm developed at this site in 1977 by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv became a basis for enabling data transmission via the internet in an efficient way. It contributed significantly in making the internet a global communications medium.

In 1977, Dr. Tatsuo Izawa of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) invented the vapor-phase axial deposition (VAD) method suitable for the mass production of optical fiber. NTT, Furukawa Electric, Sumitomo Electric, and Fujikura collaboratively investigated the fabrication process. The technology successfully shifted from research and development to commercialization. The VAD method contributed greatly to the construction of optical-fiber networks.

In December 1976, Richard Wiggins demonstrated the Speak & Spell concept to Paul Breedlove, Larry Brantingham and Gene Frantz in Texas Instruments' Dallas research laboratory. This group led the team that created Speak & Spell in April 1978. The key device was the industry's first digital signal processing integrated processor, the TMS5100. This innovation in audio processing began the huge digital signal processing consumer market.

In November 1978, a team from MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) became the first to use a digital processor to reconstruct an image from Seasat-A, the first civilian spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR). MDA engineers subsequently developed three of the four most important SAR digital processing algorithms that replaced the optical processing methods used previously.

On 8 March 1979, N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken demonstrated for the international press a Compact Disc Audio Player. The demonstration showed that it is possible by using digital optical recording and playback to reproduce audio signals with superb stereo quality. This research at Philips established the technical standard for digital optical recording systems.

Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. began developing 20-inch diameter photomultiplier tubes at Toyooka Factory in 1979 for a 3000-ton water-filled Cherenkov particle detector, Kamiokande-II, in response to a request by Professor Masatoshi Koshiba. 1071 PMTs on it collected photons induced in the water by the particles falling on it. Kamiokande-II detected a neutrino burst in the Supernova SN1987A in 1987, earning Professor Koshiba a Nobel Prize in 2002.

A research team in the Physics department of Dundee University, Scotland demonstrated in 1979 that amorphous silicon field-effect transistors were able to switch liquid crystal arrays. Other semiconductor thin film materials had been found to be unsuitable for deposition on large area substrates. The invention laid the foundation for the commercial development of flat panel television displays.

1980-Present

This site commemorates the creation of the Modified READ two-dimensional coding for G3 facsimile developed through the careful collaboration of NTT and KDDI. Strong Japanese leadership with intense international discussion, testing, and cooperation produced the International Telecommunications Union G3 recommendation in 1980. This innovative and efficient standard enabled the worldwide commercial success of facsimile.

UC Berkeley students designed and built the first VLSI reduced instruction-set computer in 1981. The simplified instructions of RISC-I reduced the hardware for instruction decode and control, which enabled a flat 32-bit address space, a large set of registers, and pipelined execution. A good match to C programs and the Unix operating system, RISC-I influenced instruction sets widely used today, including those for game consoles, smartphones and tablets.

Mitsubishi Electric developed the world's first large-scale emissive color video display system and installed it at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, California in 1980. It achieved bright, efficient, high-quality moving images using matrix-addressed cathode-ray tubes (CRT) as pixels. With increased dimensions and resolution, the system has entertained and informed millions of people in sports facilities and public spaces worldwide.

In early 1982, Burr-Brown Research Corporation, later part of Texas Instruments, Inc., demonstrated a 16-bit monolithic digital-to-analog converter. Coupled with earlier compact disc development by Philips and Sony, it enabled affordable high-quality compact disc players, helped transform music distribution and playback from analog phonograph records to digital compact discs, and ushered in digital media playback.

The world’s first map-based automotive navigation system, ‘Honda Electro Gyrocator’, was released in 1981. This system was based on inertial navigation technology using mileage and gyro sensors. It pioneered the on-board display of the destination path of a moving vehicle on overlaying transparent road-map sheets, and contributed to the advancement of automotive navigation systems.

In 1982, the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory in collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation completed the 45-m telescope as the world’s largest antenna for millimeter-wave radio astronomy. The 45-m telescope's innovative engineering contributed to the progress of radio astronomy by enabling high-resolution and high-sensitivity observations. Notable discoveries included new interstellar molecules and a black hole.

NHK began the world's first direct broadcast satellite service in May, 1984. This was the culmination of eighteen years of research that included the development of an inexpensive low-noise receiver and investigations of rain attenuation in the 12 GHz band. RRL, NASDA, TSCJ, Toshiba Corporation, General Electric Company, and NASA participated with NHK to make satellite broadcasting to the home a practical reality.

In 1984, Kyoto University built the MU (Middle and Upper atmosphere) radar as the first large-scale MST (Mesosphere, Stratosphere, and Troposphere) radar with a two-dimensional active phased array antenna system, with the collaboration of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. The MU radar enabled continuous and flexible observation of the atmosphere, and has contributed to the progress of atmospheric science and radar engineering.

Toshiba T1100, a Pioneering Contribution to the Development of Laptop PC, 1985

The Toshiba T1100, an IBM PC compatible laptop computer that shipped in 1985, made an invaluable contribution to the development of the laptop PC and portable personal computers. With the T1100, Toshiba demonstrated and promoted the emergence and importance of true portability for PCs running packaged software, with the result that T1100 won acceptance not only among PC experts but by the business community.

NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) began broadcasting emergency warning code signals in 1985. The system embedded signals within AM and FM radio broadcasts that provided reliable and prompt transmission of emergency warning information to the public. During the course of digital TV standardization, the warning codes were integrated into technical standards of international satellite and terrestrial broadcasting.

On this site in 1987, yttrium-barium-copper-oxide, YBa2Cu3O7, the first material to exhibit superconductivity at temperatures above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77k), was discovered. This ushered in an era of accelerated superconductor materials science and engineering research worldwide, and led to advanced applications of superconductivity in energy, medicine, communications, and transportation.

Sharp demonstrated a fourteen-inch TFT-LCD for TV in 1988 when the display size of the mass-produced TFT-LCD was three inches. The high display quality in Cathode Ray Tube size convinced other electronic companies to join the infant TFT-LCD industry aimed at emerging full-color portable PCs. Two decades later, TFT-LCDs replaced CRTs, making the vision of RCA's LCD group in the 1960s a reality.

Built by Siemens, owned and operated by Western Area Power Administration (US DOE), the 200 MW HVDC Virginia Smith Converter Station near Sidney, Nebraska, connected the eastern and western U.S. grids. Its core technology is an all solid-state converter with integrated steady-state, dynamic, and transient voltage control up to its full rating. The station was an important advance in HVDC technology and cost-effectiveness.

TAT-8, the first fiber-optic cable to cross an ocean, entered service 14 December 1988. AT&T, British Telecom, and France Telecom led the consortium that built TAT-8, which spanned a seabed distance of 5,846 km between North America and Europe. AT&T Bell Laboratories developed the foundational technologies: 1.3 micron fiber, cable, splicing, laser detector, and 280 Mbps repeater for 40,000 telephone-call capacity. Bell Labs led the integration at Freehold, New Jersey.

On 7 November 1989, Qualcomm publicly demonstrated a digital cellular radio system based on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) spread spectrum technology, which increased capacity, improved service quality, and extended battery life. This formed the basis for IS-95 second-generation standards and third-generation broadband standards that were applied to cellular mobile devices worldwide.

Special Citations

On the 150th anniversary of his birth, the IEEE is pleased to recognize the seminal work of Nikola Tesla in the field of electrical engineering. Among his many accomplishments, those that stand out are his innovative contributions to the applications of polyphase current to electric power systems, his pioneering work with electromagnetic waves, and his experiments with very high voltages. The Tesla Museum in Beograd is to be commended for its successful efforts to preserve artifacts and documents related to Tesla and to make them accessible to scholars throughout the world.

The Computer History Museum's mission is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the Information Age. The museum houses the world's largest collection of computers and related software, documents, and visual media. Public exhibits celebrate the rich history of computing, aided by a speaker series, education activities, historical restorations, and research programs.